Contraband
by Falconcry
Summary: Some months after the Reichenbach Fall, Sherlock has taken up residence in the flat of Molly Hooper. Now the high-functioning sociopath must decide how much he truly needs her, while Molly struggles with a resurgence of affection for him.


Molly Hooper stepped into her flat, her eyes adjusting to the dim hallway. Shaking the rain from her hair, she slipped out of her coat and boots and left them to dry beside the door before walking slowly towards the sitting room. She turned on the lights and drew open the shades, letting in the weak sunlight of the dreary London afternoon. Drab umbrellas bobbed on the sidewalk below, hurrying away for warmth and comfort, as streetcars added sudden movement to the sluggish atmosphere. With a sigh she turned her back on the sight. The rain had become increasingly steady, drumming on the roof, subconsciously comforting. Her bare feet padded softly over the linoleum kitchen tiles, her thoughts on warm food and an evening beside the telly.

She rummaged around in her woefully-stocked cabinets and selected the final box of penne. Molly scratched out a few more lines on her grocery list, knowing she couldn't keep putting the trip off much longer. With an absent flick of her hand the small sink-side radio came to life and a melancholy voice invaded the kitchen. The pathologist set her teeth. "That's enough gloominess for one day," she muttered, turning to a more cheerful station as she set the water to boil.

After the noodles had sufficiently cooked, Molly poured the pot's contents into two bowls she had snatched from the mostly-clean dishwasher. As she mixed in the sauce, she anticipated where she would be taking the second bowl. More precisely, the person she would be giving it to. Molly ventured down the hall towards the guest room, the rain casting wriggling shadows on the bare white wood of the door. She paused. Warmth emanated from the bowl in her left hand, her right raised to the silver knob. Molly strained to hear any sound from behind the barrier before her, but only the shiver of rain greeted her.

Pushing the door open, her eyes were drawn to the only source of light, the window to her right. She beheld the man seated motionless beside it, the light carving deep shadows in his face. He stared out the window with unseeing eyes, their color washed away by the rain. Molly glanced about the room. Clothes lay where they had been thrown, tangled white sheets abandoned far from the small bed in the corner, which looked like it hadn't been touched in days. The bathroom door hung ajar, the smell of unwashed towels reaching her where she stood. She wrinkled her nose, pity tugging at her.

"Sherlock," she ventured, stepping forward, only to stop as her feet felt a thin crunch. She looked down and saw a dozen pieces of paper littering the carpet, each holding a mass of scribbled handwriting. Molly bent to retrieve the one she had stepped on; a sharp voice caught her.

"Don't read that." Startled by the baritone, Molly lifted her eyes to where Sherlock sat. He hadn't even looked in her direction. Molly straightened, holding the cooling bowl of penne lightly and willed herself to move towards him.

"Sherlock," she repeated. "I brought dinner." She offered the bowl, yet the dark-haired man only continued his impassive stare at the glass. Molly's sigh was part impatience, part worry, noting the hungry stretch of skin around his eyes and mouth. She was only too aware of his grief, and the fierce will that drove it, but she also knew that no matter how strongly he wished it, he could not keep starving his body like this.

Her gaze traveled to his neck. How thin it had grown, each breath throwing his etched collarbones into sharp relief. Molly's worry knotted thickly in her stomach, and she found him considering her when she sought his eyes. Sherlock's eyes were the color of the ocean after a storm, and for a moment she was lost in their depths. Their glimmering gray-green swam with rain shadows, then he blinked, and she returned to herself. Molly met the detective's quiet stare with a determined glance. "You need to eat." She reminded him gently, with a firm edge. She placed the bowl, steaming in the room's chilly air, on the chair-side table before taking the seat opposite him. Sherlock blinked again, and Molly caught a glimpse of a nameless emotion in his eyes before he turned them back to his window.

Molly dug her nails into her palms, helplessness gripping her. Housing the great Sherlock Holmes after his dramatic fall from grace had proved a battle, and it was one Molly feared she was losing. Sometimes she wondered how John had ever done it. Sherlock was moody, capable of great highs and dangerous lows, unpredictable, and easily bored. Molly was honestly surprised that her flat was still standing since Sherlock had moved in nearly two months prior. At the beginning, the newness of having another person sharing her living space was a source of excitement and apprehension, but the novelty had quickly worn off. The morning she had marched in on him in the sitting room in nothing but her bath towel was one she wouldn't be forgetting anytime soon.

In those first weeks, Molly treaded lightly around Sherlock, aware the emotional toll his faux suicide took on him, but he had held up surprisingly well. Almost too well. In those first weeks, Sherlock's grief was painfully visible, but he did well covering it with trappings of his usual self. The confident walk, bright, intelligent eyes that cut straight through her, a knowing smirk; those had bandaged his wounds so well for a time she began to forget them. Then one night they were watching the telly, and the news broke into a special report, glaringly titled: "The Life and Lies of Sherlock Holmes." Molly's chest tightened as she reached for the remote, but she felt Sherlock's hand gently touch her own. She had glanced over to find him looking straight ahead, his back perfectly straight. Hesitating, Molly settled back into her seat. Sherlock watched the screen as if there was nothing else in the world, drinking in the doctored image of himself being portrayed to the rest of London, the rest of England.

Molly found it horrid programming, yet she couldn't tear her eyes away. They sat in silence for the remaining hour. She grew angry at the faceless voice behind the narration, hearing it grow more accusing as the program built towards the inevitable end. "A witness from the scene reports…" The screen switched to a bewildered man in a gray coat and shocked expression. "It was… I don't know even know how to describe it, it was horrible. He just… fell." Molly glanced Sherlock's profile, watching the shifting lights play across his skin. His eyes were steel; the lines of his mouth betrayed nothing. The narrator went on. "Following the suicide of the once-great Sherlock Holmes, those that knew him best gave a few words." It flashed to a small field of green, hedged in by trees, and Molly knew it as the quiet graveyard called Newport Cemetery. The camera panned to a frail looking woman, visibly trembling with emotion.

Sherlock breathed in sharply. Molly looked at him again to see his lips slightly parted, intently glaring at the telly. When she looked back to the screen, she recognized the woman as Mrs. Hudson. "He… he was a good man." Mrs. Hudson held a shaking hand to her mouth as the words broke from her. "I don't believe a… a word of what they say about him." The woman's voice gave out, overcome by sobs. Pity twisted in Molly for her, wanting to comfort the elderly landlady with the knowledge that the man she was grieving for was alive and breathing beside her.

The remainder of the broadcast was insignificant, simply underscoring the producer's obvious bias against Holmes yet urging the viewers to make the judgment on their own. It had made no mention of John, Molly realized. She started as Sherlock unfolded himself rapidly from the couch and made for the guest room without a word.

That was the day something broke in him, and he had been slowly reduced to what she now saw before her. The rain had increased to a pounding, drawing her from her reprieve. Molly blinked as her eyes made the transition from the healthy, livelier Sherlock of her memories to the shadow of the man he had become. It came to her that he had been drawing on strength that wasn't truly there. Playing brave for her, or was it to fool himself? The listlessness of his gaze urged her to speak; yet as she drew breath, Sherlock beat her to it.

"That man down there," his voice cracking from disuse. "The one with the black umbrella at the corner." Molly looked and saw him, standing in the driving rain. "Obviously having an affair."

"How can you be sure?" A faint hope stirred inside of her. He didn't meet the question in her eyes but responded anyhow.

"Those are new shoes. I watched as he made his way down the street, the way he's limping he must have walked for some time in the unbroken soles. And wear new shoes on a day that promised to be as dreary as this? No doubt to impress someone, and not his boss, as his briefcase plainly dictates Ross's Law Firm, within easy walking distance from here, where he takes a cab to and from his flat. And his watch, you can tell he usually wears it on his right wrist, from how he continues to glance down at it even though it isn't there. Our good man must take the cab at five, given his attention to his absent watch. He obviously works a high-end job; observe the quality of his suit and the briefcase he holds. There is a distinct lack of cufflinks on a jacket that desperately needs them, and he seems to be missing a button on his shirt, on the collar no less. What would make a man leave in such a rush that he would forgo such essential components in his wardrobe, and in damaged attire? Leaving in a hurry from someplace. Not his home, nor his job, so where else but from a lover's embrace?"

As he spoke, Molly saw some of his old strength returning, the keen light leaping into his eyes again. His voice rose and fell, rich and smooth, as it used to be. It warmed her to have a reminder of the Sherlock she used to know, and the hope inside her burned a little brighter.

"His lover is also left-handed." The sentence ended with a note of finality. Molly smiled unbidden, glancing away before returning to Sherlock's face. She saw there his resourceful intelligence that had so entranced her when she first began working with him, casting off some of the unhealthiness of his current state.

"When do you suppose it'll be safe?" she ventured after a pause. Sherlock leaned back slowly in his chair and steepled his fingers, eyes focused somewhere in the rain. He kept silent for a long while. The sound of falling water lulled the room into a dreary silence. Just as Molly had decided conversation with him was fruitless, Sherlock's baritone sounded again.

"I can't be sure. But it would be for the best if I were to... lay low for a while longer." His tone was unreadable, but she could be sure where his mind was venturing.

"I understand. Maybe it would be best if I left you alone for a while." Molly rose to leave and started for the door.

"Stay with me." Something in the way he said it stopped her. Molly turned, reading the affliction and need in his suddenly unguarded face. He held her eyes as she sat down again. "What would you do, Molly, if you were lying to the people you cared about most every day?" For a moment she didn't know what to tell him. She looked down at her hands, considering. Then she looked back into his vulnerable, noble eyes.

"I would tell them the truth. Unless that wasn't possible." She paused. "Are you thinking about John?" Sherlock slightly narrowed his eyes, but she knew him well enough to see the pain there. And sadness. Molly remembered what she had said to Sherlock that night in the lab: _"You look sad… when you think he can't see you." _Sherlock blinked.

"Yes." The room had grown dimmer in the meantime and the light of the lamp in the corner burned brighter. The rain continued to fall. The yellow glow flickered across his face, bringing out the amber in his ocean-storm eyes, still fixed on her. Molly felt her cheeks grow hot beneath his gaze and quickly turned to the darkened window. The lights of London glowed softly through the rain, the sounds of cars racing by in the downpour advancing and receding like the tide. They sat this way for a long while.

Molly woke with a start as her chin dropped off her hand. Her eyes took a moment to adjust to the dim bedroom; the chair across from her was vacant. Blinking the sleep from her eyes, Molly looked unseeingly round the shadowed room, her gaze coming to rest on the bowl of penne she left by Sherlock's chair. It was empty. Molly could only stare, recalling all those mornings she entered to find cold, hard meals that she could only scrape into the bin or salvage for herself. She knew that he ate, from the missing food in the cupboards and the fridge, but this would be the first time in weeks he had eaten what she made for him.

Molly's eyes had adjusted to the dark, and she saw the room transformed. Strewn clothing had vanished from the floor to be gathered in a pile by the washroom, along with his bath towels. Books, scattered pieces of paper, various instruments presented themselves in a somewhat orderly fashion on the desk and nightstand; even the lamps in the room seemed brighter. A slow smile came to Molly Hooper's face.

A soft moan came from the corner. The light was sparse, but Molly made out a figure beneath the sheets. Her bare feet made little noise as she approached. Sherlock's side rose and fell, legs slightly curled, sleeping soundly. Molly listened to him breathe, the peaceful sound washing over her. The covers were pulled up to his neck, all the tension and expression drained from his face. Molly knelt to rest her chin on the bed, inches from Sherlock's oblivion. She watched his eyes wander beneath their lids, how his dark curls fell across his brow and neck. Molly was reminded of how much of a child he still harbored within himself. Beneath the brazen confidence of his conscious self, Sherlock housed private fears and responsibility that he refused to let the world touch.

Was he afraid to care, or did he realize he cared too much? Molly knew he mean for her to see what she beheld in his eyes tonight, to let his shield descend for her. But she did not know why. He knew the way she had felt about him, but Molly had buried her affections long ago. At first they had smoldered in her unbearably beneath the surface, but she had learned to ignore them as time went on. Molly hadn't even considered her emotions for Sherlock as of late. She had been too occupied learning to live with him. The thought made her smile.

Cars hissed by on the street, their lights racing across the walls. Molly wondered how many moments like the one she and Sherlock had shared had passed over her head when she was too distracted to notice. She wondered how many times she had missed the message in his eyes, or other signs he was leaving. Molly knew Sherlock needed people, lest his great mind consume itself with thought, but was she one worthy of that need? She thought of John, and how long he and Sherlock had shared a flat. While she had been but a minor player in their lives, even she could tell that John and Sherlock meant the world to each other. Without John, was Sherlock trying to translate his great, unguided need unto her?

It was getting late, and her eyes were starting to close. Molly stood as quietly as she could and looked down again at Sherlock. The consulting detective stirred in his sleep and sighed. She leaned down and kissed his warm cheek, lingering. Molly reluctantly moved her face away, considering the curve of his jaw and dark hairline. She had never been this close to him before. Molly Hooper kissed Sherlock Holmes again, on the edge of his mouth, marveling at the softness of his skin.

He went on dreaming. Molly straightened, her heartbeat fluttering in her ears. The affection she had spent the better part of a year starving had begun seeping through the cracks again, demanding to be near him. With a sigh, she wrapped her sweater tighter around herself and headed for the door. The metal handle was cool in her hand as she opened it slowly, reluctantly restoring the distance between herself and Sherlock. Her heart was still pounding, as she knew it would all night, as it had done all those days she had let her emotions for Sherlock run rampant.

Molly looked back over her shoulder and beheld Sherlock's serene face, unwilling to look away lest such a moment never come again. But the hour was late, and she felt herself growing weary on her feet. Molly stepped into the hall and became the pathologist once more, the caretaker, the babysitter. Once in her room, she let herself feel the warmth of the repressed feelings once again free. Molly sank into her bed, caught between the worst kind of hope and consequence. _He cannot know_, she thought, switching out the lights and slipping beneath the covers. _He cannot._


End file.
